[geo] Developing countries must lead on solar geoengineering research

[Andrew Lockley]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03917-8

Developing countries must lead on solar geoengineering research
The nations that are most vulnerable to climate change must drive
discussions of modelling, ethics and governance, argue A. Atiq Rahman,
Paulo Artaxo, Asfawossen Asrat, Andy Parker and 8 co-signatories.
A. Atiq Rahman,
Paulo Artaxo,
Asfawossen Asrat &
Andy Parker

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[image: A group of villagers stands beside the Jamuna River in Bangladesh]

A group of villagers stands beside the Jamuna River in Bangladesh, where
erosion is eating into the riverbanks.Credit: G.M.B. Akash/Panos

People in the global south are on the front line of climate change. As
global temperatures creep upwards, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) is forecasting rising seas eroding small island states1
, declining
food production in many regions of Asia2
, water stress
across Africa3  and
major loss of biodiversity in South America4
.

Developing countries have spoken out on climate policy. Links between
climate justice and development are now accepted, as is the idea that
nations have common responsibilities — emitters are liable for impacts felt
elsewhere. Despite having emitted very little greenhouse gas themselves,
the world’s least-developed countries and small-island states demanded that
the 2015 Paris climate agreement require warming to be kept “well below” 2
°C, and that a 1.5 °C limit should also be explored.

But there is a limit to what populations threatened by sea-level rise,
biodiversity loss, droughts and hurricanes can do. Mitigation of climate
change is crucial. The emissions cuts agreed in Paris are not enough — they
will take the world to a 3 °C rise (see go.nature.com/2u3ybkh). Adaptation
is therefore essential. As the scale of the damage grows, more countries
will turn to the “loss and damage” provisions in the Paris agreement. And
these are vague: who should pay how much, and to whom, for lost farming or
fishing livelihoods? What size of cheque would compensate for the
destruction of coral reefs?

In that context, solar geoengineering — injecting aerosol particles into
the stratosphere to reflect away a little inbound sunlight — is being
discussed as a way to cool the planet, fast. The technique is
controversial, and rightly so. It is too early to know what its effects
would be: it could be very helpful or very harmful. Developing countries
have most to gain or lose. In our view, they must maintain their climate
leadership and play a central part in research and discussions around solar
geoengineering.

High stakes

Solar geoengineering is outlandish and unsettling. It invokes technologies
that are redolent of science fiction — jets lacing the stratosphere with
sunlight-blocking particles, and fleets of ships spraying seawater into
low-lying clouds to make them whiter and brighter to reflect sunlight. Yet,
if such approaches could be realized technically and politically, they
could slow, stop or even reverse the rise in global temperatures within one
or two years. No other way of doing this has been conceived. Removing
greenhouse gases from the air would take decades, if it is even possible.

A decade of modelling research indicates that solar geoengineering might
reduce many of the worst effects of climate change if deployed in
moderation. For example, injecting 5 megatonnes of sulfur dioxide into the
stratosphere — about one-quarter of that released by Mount Pinatubo’s
eruption in 1991 — each year could keep warming below 2 °C. (However, there
are likely to be limits to how much cooling can be achieved, especially
under high greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios5
.) Studies have
found that solar geoengineering should also be able to reduce climate
impacts on hydrology, redressing trends in which wet regions get wetter and
dry regions get drier6
. Lower
temperatures would slow global sea-level rise7
 and could curb
the increasing incidence and strength of tropical cyclones8
.

A decade ago, there were serious concerns that solar geoengineering might
produce stark winners and losers and might disrupt the monsoons. Research
has all

Re: [geo] Fwd: DECIMALS Fund – call for proposals opens today

[Andrew Lockley]

I'm unsure why the developing world needs to do its own SRM research any
more than it needs to manufacture its own mobile phones or vaccinations. We
have clusters of competence in various parts of the world for various
things - and distribution of effort risks dilution of competence. Perhaps
better to get developing world scientists to take positions in global
centres, if their local knowledge is specifically required.

I'd be interested to hear other views on this issue, as the centralisation
(or otherwise) of the SRM research industry is an important issue for our
community.

A


On Wed, 4 Apr 2018, 03:55 Alan Robock,  wrote:

> FYI.
>
> Alan
>
> Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
>Editor, *Reviews of Geophysics*
> Department of Environmental Sciences  Phone:
> +1-848-932-5751
> Rutgers University
>   Fax: +1-732-932-8644
> 14 College Farm RoadE-mail:
> rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
> New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA
> http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
> ☮   http://twitter.com/AlanRobock   2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN!
> Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54
> Sent from my iPad
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* SRMGI 
> *Date:* April 3, 2018 at 7:59:34 PM MDT
> *To:* 
> *Subject:* *DECIMALS Fund – call for proposals opens today*
> *Reply-To:* SRMGI 
>
> DECIMALS Fund
> Call for proposals opens today
>
>
> The SRM Governance Initiative is proud to announce the opening of the call
> for proposals for a major new SRM modelling fund for developing country
> scientists: the DECIMALS Fund (Developing Country Impacts Modelling
> Analysis for SRM). DECIMALS will support scientists from the Global South
> who want to analyse how SRM geoengineering might affect their regions.
>
> DECIMALS is the first fund of its kind and it features in a Comment
> 
> that’s published today in Nature, where a group of eminent Southern
> scholars and NGO leaders call for developing countries to play a central
> role in SRM research and discussion.
>
> Grants of up to USD$70k will support scientists as they explore the
> climate impacts that matter most locally, from droughts to cyclones to
> extreme temperatures to precipitation changes. The DECIMALS Fund aims to go
> beyond research: its wider goals include capacity-building,
> community-building, and expanding the conversation around SRM. DECIMALS
> research teams will therefore receive financial support to attend
> conferences, to collaborate with each other and with SRM modelling experts,
> and to discuss their findings with their local communities at the end of
> their projects.
>
> Note that applicants do not need to be experts in SRM at the time of
> application, as there has been little research on this across the Global
> South to date. See here
> 
> for full information about the grants, applicant eligibility, and the
> application process. The call is open from now until *29 May 2018.*
>
> Please do pass this along contacts and colleagues who might be interested
> in applying, and feel free to circulate it on departmental or professional
> email groups.
>
> The SRMGI team
> This email was sent to *rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
> *. Want to change how you receive these
> emails? You can update
> 
> your preferences or unsubscribe
> 
> from this list. Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative .
> Kienitzer Str. 100 . Berlin 12049 . Germany
>
> [image: Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp]
> 
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
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[geo] Fwd: DECIMALS Fund – call for proposals opens today

[Alan Robock]

FYI. 

Alan

Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
   Editor, Reviews of Geophysics
Department of Environmental Sciences  Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University   
Fax: +1-732-932-8644
14 College Farm RoadE-mail: 
rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551  USA   http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock
☮   http://twitter.com/AlanRobock   2017 Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN! 
Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54
Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

> From: SRMGI 
> Date: April 3, 2018 at 7:59:34 PM MDT
> To: 
> Subject: DECIMALS Fund – call for proposals opens today
> Reply-To: SRMGI 
> 
> 
> 
> DECIMALS Fund
> Call for proposals opens today
> 
> The SRM Governance Initiative is proud to announce the opening of the call 
> for proposals for a major new SRM modelling fund for developing country 
> scientists: the DECIMALS Fund (Developing Country Impacts Modelling Analysis 
> for SRM). DECIMALS will support scientists from the Global South who want to 
> analyse how SRM geoengineering might affect their regions.
>  
> DECIMALS is the first fund of its kind and it features in a Comment that’s 
> published today in Nature, where a group of eminent Southern scholars and NGO 
> leaders call for developing countries to play a central role in SRM research 
> and discussion.
>  
> Grants of up to USD$70k will support scientists as they explore the climate 
> impacts that matter most locally, from droughts to cyclones to extreme 
> temperatures to precipitation changes. The DECIMALS Fund aims to go beyond 
> research: its wider goals include capacity-building, community-building, and 
> expanding the conversation around SRM. DECIMALS research teams will therefore 
> receive financial support to attend conferences, to collaborate with each 
> other and with SRM modelling experts, and to discuss their findings with 
> their local communities at the end of their projects.
>  
> Note that applicants do not need to be experts in SRM at the time of 
> application, as there has been little research on this across the Global 
> South to date. See here for full information about the grants, applicant 
> eligibility, and the application process. The call is open from now until 29 
> May 2018.
>  
> Please do pass this along contacts and colleagues who might be interested in 
> applying, and feel free to circulate it on departmental or professional email 
> groups.
>  
> The SRMGI team
> This email was sent to rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu. Want to change how you 
> receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from 
> this list. Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative . Kienitzer Str. 
> 100 . Berlin 12049 . Germany
> 
> 
>  
>  
>  

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Re: [geo] Solar geoengineering as part of an overall strategy for meeting the 1.5°C Paris target

[Stephen Salter]

Hi All

In the recent Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. special issue on Solar 
Geoengineering to meet Paris the Paris target at 
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/376/2119/20160454table 1 
lists, as a disadvantage relative to stratospheric sulphur, that marine 
stratospheric clouds cover 10% of the Earth which means that marine 
cloud brightening is ‘patchy’.No reference to this number is given and 
it contradicts the 18% ‘low not high clouds’ mentioned by Charlson and 
Lovelock in their 1987 paper about the CLAW hypothesis and the effects 
of dimethyl-sulphide from phytoplankton.There is also the Jones Hayward 
Boucher paper of 2009 which concluded that marine cloud brightening over 
the best 3% of the oceans would offset about half the thermal damage 
since preindustrial times.


However as clouds move the patchiness is smoothed out. Furthermore the 
life of condensation nuclei will be approximately half the mean time 
between rain showers so clear skies mean longer nuclei lifetimes.The 
Twomey effect is logarithmic so it is better to have half the dose over 
double the area and spraying under clear skies gives nuclei a chance to 
spread. I argue that some short-term patchiness is much less serious if 
the patches are */our/* patches. Finally the recent paper by Ahlm et 
al.at doi:10.5194/aco-2107-484 suggests that marine cloud brightening 
works much better than I would have expected with no clouds.


The Royal Society table did not have any space for the disadvantages of 
stratospheric sulphur relative to marine cloud brightening and I am 
reluctant to knock any technology about which I am not an expert.However 
if I was forced to suggest entries for the contents of a disadvantage 
table they would be as follows:


Nasty acid everywhere compared with medicinally beneficial salt mainly 
over sea.


Very little control over the areas affected.

Very long shut-down times in the event of a volcanic eruption leading to 
over-cooling.


Reflection of outgoing infra-red during polar winters leading to warming.

Use of fossil fuel from aircraft release rather than the use of energy 
from the wind.


Even though recent climate modelling has not yet used monodisperse spray 
with sizes of both liquid drops and dry salt residues both in the 
Greenfield gap and has not varied spray patterns with seasons or surface 
temperature anomalies, the majority of ensemble results show that as 
well as cooling there is a trend for dry places to become wetter and wet 
ones to become drier.We can hope that we can learn how to improve on 
this trend.


I suggest that the choice of time and place to do marine cloud 
brightening will confer advantages similar to the use of an accelerator, 
steering and brakes on road vehicles.







On 02-Apr-18 9:16 PM, Andrew Lockley wrote:


https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/publications/solar-geoengineering-part-overall-strategy-meeting-15%C2%B0c-paris-target 




  Solar geoengineering as part of an overall strategy for meeting the
  1.5°C Paris target


  Citation:

Douglas G. MacMartin, Katharine L. Ricke, and David W. Keith. 
4/2/2018. “Solar geoengineering as part of an overall strategy for 
meeting the 1.5°C Paris target 
.” 
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 376, 2119.
Download Citation 


Download
	macmartin_ricke_keith_ptrs.pdf 
 
	1.03 MB



  Abstract:

Solar geoengineering refers to deliberately reducing net radiative 
forcing by reflecting some sunlight back to space, in order to reduce 
anthropogenic climate changes; a possible such approach would be 
adding aerosols to the stratosphere. If future mitigation proves 
insufficient to limit the rise in global mean temperature to less than 
1.5°C above preindustrial, it is plausible that some additional and 
limited deployment of solar geoengineering could reduce climate 
damages. That is, these approaches could eventually be considered as 
part of an overall strategy to manage the risks of climate change, 
combining emissions reduction, net-negative emissions technologies and 
solar geoengineering to meet climate goals. We first provide a 
physical science review of current research, research trends and some 
of the key gaps in knowledge that would need to be addressed to 
support informed decisions. Next, since few climate model simulations 
have considered these limited-deployment scenarios, we synthesize 
prior results to assess the projected response if solar geoengineering 
were used to limit global mean temperature to 1.5°C above 
preindustrial in an overshoot scenario that would otherwise peak near 
3°C. While there are some important differences, the resulting climate 
is closer in many